Todor Zhivkov

Todor Zhivkov (7 September 1911-5 August 1998) was General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 4 March 1954 to 10 November 1989, succeeding Valko Chervenkov and preceding Petar Mladenov.

Biography
Todor Zhivkov was born in Pravets, Bulgaria in 1911, and he became a printer. He joined the Communist Youth League in 1928, and the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1932. He was one of the leading members of the party in Sofia until the outbreak of World War II. During the Nazi occupation from 1941, he was active as a partisan, linking the activities of the party rank and file with those of communist guerrillas. After the coup of September 1944, he seized the initiative to suppress brutally all potential opposition to a communist state through murder, intimidation, and imprisonment. He became a non-voting member of the Communist Central Committee in 1945, and was elevated to full membership in 1949. In 1954, as Secretary-General of the Communist Party, he became the effective ruler of his country. He was perhaps the most loyal follower of the Soviet Union, matching each political shift in that country with policy changes of his own. For example, he immediately accepted Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization in 1956, but had no problems accepting the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev after Khrushchev's dismissal. He increased the country's (and his own) cultural, military, and economic dependence on the Soviet Union. This turned against him in 1989, when he tried, for the first time, to oppose the reformist trends of glasnost and perestroika coming from Moscow. Nor could he rely on Moscow any longer to ensure his own survival. In consequence, on 10 November 1989 he was deposed. On 29 February 1992 he was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and the payment of around $1 million for embezzlement and corruption. Despite President Zhelyu Zhelev's refusal to grant him a pardon, he did not have to serve his jail sentence because of his old age, and he died in 1998.